MOST Scots spend the month of January dreamily booking trips to sunnier climes and so it was yesterday for some of the country's athletics fraternity. Whether it is the European Junior Championships in Italy or Poland, the European Indoors in Serbia, the Commonwealth Youth Games in the Bahamas or the Commonwealth Games proper in the Gold Coast next April, the process of booking tickets began in earnest here at the Emirates Arena for the Scottish Athletics Senior & Under 17 Indoor Championships the Emirates Arena, as a sprinkling of Scotland's elite athletes rubbed shoulders with talented teenagers and the odd evergreen geriatric in the first event of the Team Scotland series. It was mainly family and friends who turned up in the East End of Glasgow yesterday but they witnessed the setting of one native record in the 60m hurdles, the breaking of one 35-year Scottish indoor Under-20 record, and a number of passports being rubber stamped for more exotic challenges ahead.
While Allan Hamilton, freshly returned from a US scholarship at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, confirmed his sprint legs by pipping Cameron Tindle to the Scottish championship over 60m in a time of 6.74secs, his real goal for the season is booking a Commonwealth Games spot in the long jump. With one qualifying standard already in the can, Hamilton missed out on Glasgow 2014 by all of five centimetres but hope springs eternal for the Gold Coast, even though he could only finish third in his preferred event here behind Shane Howard and Che Richards.
The 24-year-old's time in New Mexico was disrupted by the decision of his coach to uproot to Chicago midway through his scholarship, and more upheaval perhaps awaits when Meadowbank Stadium is closed for extensive refurbishment at the end of this summer.
For his part, the promising 18-year-old Tindle, after an underwhelming start to the season by his standards, had the consolation of a PB over the distance of 6.81secs.
The native Scottish record breaker on the day was Heather Paton, a 20-year-old from Birchfield Harriers in Birmingham, whose father Billy McGinty played rugby league for Scotland, Great Britain, Warrington and Wigan. This fast-improving athlete shaved another 0.03secs off her personal best with a time of 8.37secs and went off into the night dreaming of finding the tenth of a second she needs to make Commonwealth Games standard.
"Hopefully I can follow in his footsteps, and run for Scotland then Great Britain," she said.
Race of the day was a storming women's 800m taken out by Mhairi Hendry in 2:05.27, ahead of Jemma Reekie and Erin Wallace. Wallace's time of 2:06.84 in third was sufficient to book her place for the Commonwealth Youth Games in the Bahamas, while the 2:05.52 from Reekie - Laura Muir's training partner - will take her all the way to the European Under-20s in Grosseto.
Performer of the day, though, has to be Alisha Rees, a 17-year-old from Torphins, who captured both the women's 60m title in a time of 7.51secs then added the 200m in a time of 24.18secs which wiped out Linsey MacDonald's 35-year best over the distance by any Scottish Under-20 athlete. The prodigious MacDonald went on to become an Olympic bronze medallist and Rees, a double Commonwealth Youth Games medallist in Samoa in 2015, is also a young woman in a hurry. Her outdoor time over the distance is still 0.27secs outside the qualifying standard for the Gold Coast but it would be unwise to write her off just yet.
"Thirty-five years is a long time and Lindsey McDonald was such an iconic Scottish athlete so to beak one of her records is pretty fantastic," said Rees. "I’ll only be 19 at the Games so I’m still quite young. But with the way things have been going this winter, hopefully I can lower my time and get there."
Meanwhile, Jamie Bowie, a world indoor silver medalist in the 4x400m relay in Sopot in 2014, lost out to last year's winner Cameron Chalmers in the 400m, but David Smith moved one step closer to Gold Coast qualification when he cleared 2.21m to take the high jump title.
In Vienna, Eilidh Doyle opened her indoor season with victory in the quickest 400 metres time by a European so far this year.
The Olympic bronze medallist was almost a second clear of British prospect Laviai Nielsen in 51.86 seconds.
Doyle who took silver at the European Indoor Championships in Gothenburg in 2013, could now opt for another tilt at this year’s event in Belgrade in March.
Guy Learmonth began his campaign by winning the 800 metres in a personal best of 1:47.20.
It put the 24-year-old Borderer, whose Olympic hopes last year were wrecked by injury, into second place in the current world rankings.
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